


my dear, i hear your voice in mine

by singagainsoon



Series: "The Things That Stay" 'verse [4]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Drift Bond, Drift Compatibility, Drift Side Effects, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Happy, Idiots in Love, M/M, No Angst, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Post-War, Romantic Fluff, Science Boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 18:10:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14899457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singagainsoon/pseuds/singagainsoon
Summary: The apocalypse has been canceled, leaving Hermann and Newton to confront the nature of their feelings, the Drift, and each other.





	my dear, i hear your voice in mine

When Hermann opens his eyes, it is not to a mid-apocalypse disaster as he half-expected. It is to his quiet PPDC-issued quarters, the regulation sheets twisted messily around his skinny legs, his own private disaster wrapped in the inked body of Dr. Newton Geiszler, Ph.d(s) snoring beside his head.

The world is strangely quiet, placid like the surface of the Shatterdome pool he has not been down to use in months. Newton’s eyes move beneath the thin skin of his eyelids, flickering with dreams. If Hermann was not afraid to shift, to wake Newton, he would pinch himself. This has been the premise of many a dream in the years and years that he had known Newton, known _of_ him; who is to say this is not simply another dream? Hermann is almost embarrassed to think it could be anything other than a dream, like his subconscious is making a fool of him for being unable to confront the thing he has known with vehement certainty for years.

Hermann shuts his eyes and takes a moment to catalogue what he knows. First, the world has not come to an end. That much is abundantly clear. Secondly, he appears to have made it out of the Shatterdome festivities relatively unscathed. His pants are on still, at least. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly of all, he and Newton had risked their lives, together, to Drift with the brain of a kaiju.

Newton snores once, loudly, and nudges Hermann’s foot with his own. The feeling of his skin, his warmth, sends a shock jolting straight up Hermann’s spine. This is evidence enough that he is not dreaming.

He smiles wide, while he knows that no one is around to catch him. For once, Hermann does not feel so singularly _unlikeable_ . Newton shifts in his sleep, flings his arm dramatically over his eyes. The sudden jerk causes Hermann to jump, and he curses himself for it. Hermann can feel the rhythm of Newton’s heart thumping steadily alongside his own, and he counts the beats. He has no way to pinpoint how exactly he _knows_ this belongs to Newton, but he knows. There is something else there, a thrum like a pulse that he senses in his head but cannot place with any absolute certainty. The constantly-cool air that circulates through his quarters makes him shiver and sink beneath what little shelter the thin covers provide him.

He feels younger, poised carefully at his desk to compose a letter to the man he dreamed of running off to see, of settling in and sleeping peacefully beside him. Hermann sees himself, hunched with a pen in his hand, but the memory is blue-tinted and the feeling associated with it seems far-off, like reading about someone else's experience rather than recalling his own. At that time in his life, though, Hermann had still been letting his thoughts spiral into just exactly how far down Newton’s tattoos went.

He could look now, if he wanted to, but the thought of invading Newton’s privacy horrifies him. Perhaps they will reach that point, in their own time, whatever their pacing might look like.

The previous evening sits in the center of Hermann’s mind like a vague lump. There was the whole business of them saving the world, of course, but he struggles to account for the things that come afterwards. He knows he had a bit to drink, knows Newton had a good deal more than he did, is sure that they must have ducked into the solace of Hermann’s chambers at some point during the festivities happening in and around the Shatterdome. However, his lips tingle with the one singular clear memory of the thrill of the kiss they had shared the evening before, fuzzy with adrenaline and a bit too much to drink. He wonders if Newton will recall it, or if he will stalk back to his own quarters like nothing has happened and refuse to speak of it again. That is not a possibility Hermann likes to account for.

Newton is awake, and he is looking at him. Hermann pulls the blanket over his bare chest, suddenly self-conscious and aware of every goosebump that has sprouted over his pale flesh in the last five minutes. His fingers twitch. Every cell in his body pulls at him, attempting to tug him into Newton’s side where he knows, somehow, that it will be warm and sweet. His emotions are roiling in his middle, hot and bright but distant, like a star through a telescope. It is almost painful, how badly he wishes to feel Newton’s arms around his body. It burns down every tiny, spidered vein, spreads infinitely in all directions. The sensation itself seems alive, and it hurts.

He stays stiff.

“Was this-”

“A mistake?” Hermann interrupts, a bit too sharply. He blinks up at the ceiling. “Certainly not, Newton.”

Newton’s body seems to deflate as the anxiety leaves him like an exhale, and he rolls onto his side to inspect Hermann more clearly. Newton makes no move to reach for his shirt, wherever it had ended up, no sudden start to be out of bed and down the hall. The bright lines of his tattoos are a stark contrast to the white sheets, the threadbare blanket, the rumpled white pillowcases. His eyebrows raise, shooting up into the messy fringe of his hair as he catalogues the scene set before him.

Hermann wonders idly what he must look like to Newton, skin stretched just a bit too far over bones, twisted leg and oddly-jutting hip hidden beneath the sheets.

“So this…?” He trails off, gesturing between them, lilting as if to imply a question that needs answering. Hermann presses his lips into a thin line. A bright-sharp kernel of hurt pops inside him, a tiny explosion.

“Unless you wish to ‘take it back’, as they say.” Something hums like white noise in his head, noticeable but not distracting. It sits together like cogs, things fitting into place in and around him in a way that Hermann has no words for. He does not feel as if he needs to explain it to Newton, as though Newton, himself, is working through quite the same sensations.

 _This must be the Drift bond,_ he thinks, his train of thought derailing momentarily to examine this new discovery.

_Yeah, I guess it is._

He had not expected Newton to respond. He feels the tips of his ears go bright red.

Hermann folds his hands atop the covers, across his middle, and turns his head back towards Newton’s face, slack-jawed and wide with childlike wonder. Newton’s reply is a brush against his mind, hesitant but intrigued like the curiosity of a finger poking at something scientific. This is fascinating.

_If this truly is the result of our Drifting, then I trust you understand quite well how I feel about this._

_Yeah, I do. And that means you know how I feel, too, huh?_

In response, Hermann attempts to open his mind (whatever that entails, he still is not entirely sure) to Newton, lets his eyes fall closed. The frayed edges of his nerve endings sizzle and crack, and there is suddenly so much love - over a decade’s worth - crammed hurriedly inside him that Hermann feels he might not survive it. He is able to keep himself contained for all of thirty seconds before he flings himself promptly into the circle of Newton’s arms, scrunching himself down to fit beneath Newton’s chin, pain in his hip be damned. All at once, the burning in his system subsides, soothed by the contact. Newton tightens his grip around him, muscles squeezing against Hermann’s gangly frame. The relief floods his cells like the world’s strongest painkiller, numbing him to everything but Newton.

They stay that way: Hermann’s face tucked into the crook of Newton’s neck, his Bad Leg hefted carefully across Newton’s soft thigh, Newton’s arms draped almost protectively around him as though someone might fling open the door at any given moment and attempt to pry the two apart. Hermann’s fingers tangle in Newton’s bedhead, his hair surprisingly soft. They breathe in unison without having to try, and now that Hermann has picked up on it, he is hyper-aware of it.

“I’ve always-” Newton begins, but cuts his sentence short and shifts his body against Hermann’s. Hermann straightens his spine just a little, brushes his nose against Newton’s jaw, the stubble there that scratches him. He knows. _They_ know.

“As have I.”

 _Ever since the letters,_ he thinks, and both minds feel it ringing, a universal truth.

Newt’s hand slides down to Hermann’s hip, the awkward jut of the bones there, and Newton readjusts its position across his thigh with all the care of a trained professional. His hand lingers for a moment, and Hermann sighs softly to let him know that this is okay - more than okay, in fact, it is precisely what he wants. Newton’s thumb strokes a hesitant circle through the fabric of Hermann’s plaid pajama pants. Hermann pets his hair, idly.

There is a comfort beyond language in the sharing of a neural link, in cohabiting minds. Hermann is grateful that he does not need to fumble for words to attempt to express to Newton the magnetic poles of his love for him, equal and opposite, a force to be reckoned with: _I love you, I'm sorry, I love you, I'm sorry._

Hermann finds himself poking around in the blue newness of this Drift-forged space they share, looking for any memory of the night prior that isn’t tainted by alcohol. He finds nothing but his own brief recollection of their lips meeting, the fire that had sparked and not since ceased burning. They are clear-headed now, in the dim of Hermann’s bedroom, and so he thinks it’s time to begin with something they both will remember quite clearly.

Hermann presses a hand to Newton’s cheek, turns his face towards him to kiss him only to catch Newton in the middle of leaning in to meet him. It is awkward, naturally, but only for the brief moment where they cannot quite decide which way to tilt their heads. Hermann’s nose bumps Newton's, their lips off-center, and when Newton moves his face in the opposite direction, their noses smash. Their lips do meet, though, sliding at last into a workable position, and Hermann cannot keep himself from laughing into Newton’s partly-open mouth. He feels Newton’s heart clench beside his own, the emotion overwhelming and new, filling up the in-between space that they'd forged through their Drift. It is as effortless breathing, existing, _being._

Even before the Drift, they knew deep down that this was inevitable.

Newton’s hand rests, flat and secure, on the small of Hermann’s back. Some place deep within them, different but perhaps unchangeably the same, had always known that they would end here. Maybe not _here_ in the sense of Hermann’s too-flat mattress in his too-small quarters, but _here_ in that they should have expected to be twined in each other’s arms, hearts, minds at some undetermined but fixed point in the future ( _their_ future, a thing the two were always meant to share).

When they separate reluctantly for air, both breathing heavily, eyes shining, Newton says, “Can we do that again?”

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on twitter @kaijubf !!


End file.
